Boys play with a ball in front of oilfields burned by Islamic State fighters in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq November 23, 2016. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Female Kurdish Peshmerga take part their graduation ceremony at a police academy in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province, Iraq March 30, 2016. (Photo by Ari Jalal/Reuters)

Star Wars actors on the Cantina set at Star Wars Celebration: The Ultimate Fan Experience held at the Anaheim Convention Center on Thursday, April 16, 2015, in Anaheim, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP Photo)

A massive sand storm cloud is close to enveloping a military camp as it rolls over Al Asad, Iraq, April 27, 2005. (Photo by Cpl. Alicia M. Garcia, U.S. Marine Corps/Reuters/U.S. Department of Defense)

An aerial view shows boats sailing in the marshes of Chibayish in Iraq's southern Dhi Qar province on February 8, 2025. (Photo by Asaad Niazi/AFP Photo)

A design studio has launched its own dogs of war – by cleverly blending iconic Second World War planes with their canine counterparts. Photo: Wellington bomber with Golden Retreiver camoflage. A design studio has launched its own dogs of war – by cleverly blending iconic Second World War planes with their canine counterparts. (Photo by BNPS)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

A man takes a photograph of his friend as thick smoke rises from a fire, which broke out at oil wells set ablaze by Islamic State militants before they fled the oil-producing region of Qayyara, Iraq, January 28, 2017. (Photo by Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)